Wednesday, December 9, 2009

VEVO goes live in the US. Will it be a hit?

It was set to go live (on the Internet) after a huge launch party in New York City last night featuring Bono, Mariah Carey, Lada Gaga and numerous other big name recording artists speaking and performing.

In reality, most visiting the 'next generation music video site' either couldn't reach it, or were redirected to the company blog.

This morning, most that I spoke with briefly here in the US could now access VEVO here .... and it has now been officially indexed by Google as well:

Videos are also being cross-posted to YouTube, with channels for each artist and the new VEVO logo appearing embedded in the videos.

No surprise that among the honored guests at the launch part was Google's CEO Eric Schmidt.

Hulu revenge? Maybe.

It's been an interesting month for music on the web. Google announced their 'music search' which works extremely well and often delivers results from Lala .... which, it was revealed last week, is being acquired by Apple.

All of this may be a defining turn for an industry that has been badly hurt by illegal downloads and counterfeit media.

The VEVO launch library (first noticed on YouTube late last night) is very limited. This could be the key to keeping the buzz alive for VEVO. A local client for slower speed connections might not be a bad idea either.